I noticed that it is not just on sparc that util-vserver fails to build from source, but also on various other architectures. The following to pages list the logs:
http://experimental.ftbfs.de/build.php?arch=&pkg=util-vserver http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?arch=&pkg=util-vserver The latter one lists mipsel, s390, sparc, hppa, powerpc, and m68k as the architectures that have failed for version 0.30.204-1. Andreas Barth gave me an account on his powerpc machine, set up a sid chroot, and installed the build dependencies on it, and I quickly found three problems that prevent the powerpc build: * in src/vshelper-sync.c, there is a test for __linux, but this is not defined with gcc --std=c99 (which configure wants to use); using __linux__ instead works * in dietlibc's sys/types.h, there is a similar test for powerpc, instead of __powerpc__, that fails with gcc --std=c99; this can be worked around by adding -Dpowerpc to CFLAGS; I have reported this as bug #300917 * util-vserver's build wants to use libtool and libtool wants to use /usr/lib/diet/lib-powerpc, but dietlibc has /usr/lib/diet/lib-ppc instead. I worked around this by asking Andreas to add a symlink. I've reported this as a bug against dietlibc-dev as well, but haven't yet received the bug number. Attached is a patch for the first two problems. The latter problem requires an update to dietlibc, I expect. At least some of the other architectures probably have similar problems to these. I'll see if I can find access to suitable machines for testing things, and if so, will send further patches. I hope this has been helpful. Happy hacking.
diff -ru util-vserver-0.30.204.orig/debian/rules util-vserver-0.30.204/debian/rules --- util-vserver-0.30.204.orig/debian/rules 2005-03-22 18:37:47.329587000 +0100 +++ util-vserver-0.30.204/debian/rules 2005-03-22 18:39:14.282724214 +0100 @@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ # so far. #MAKE_OPTS = pkglibdir=/var/lib/util-vserver PKGLIBDIR=/var/lib/util-vserver -CFLAGS = -Wall -g +CFLAGS = -Wall -g -Dpowerpc ifneq (,$(findstring noopt,$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS))) CFLAGS += -O0 diff -ru util-vserver-0.30.204.orig/src/vshelper-sync.c util-vserver-0.30.204/src/vshelper-sync.c --- util-vserver-0.30.204.orig/src/vshelper-sync.c 2004-04-21 11:44:05.000000000 +0200 +++ util-vserver-0.30.204/src/vshelper-sync.c 2005-03-22 18:39:27.484200368 +0100 @@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ FD_ZERO(&fds); FD_SET(fd, &fds); -#ifndef __linux +#ifndef __linux__ # error vshelper relies on the Linux select() behavior (timeout holds remaining time) #endif